City Council passes budget with commercial tax cut

Panel amends mayor’s plan to cut rates for business and residents alike

WOONSOCKET – Modifying the mayor’s proposed $152.2 million budget Monday, the City Council took another step on a years-long mission to chip away at the comparatively high commercial tax burden, but the relief came at the expense of residential property owners.

On a 5-2 vote, the council also shifted funds from a smorgasbord of temporary and unfilled positions across City Hall departments, squirreling away a total of $1.06 million amid the uncertainty of a state revenue stream that’s likely to get choked off by COVID-19. Depending on how that revenue picture develops, the administration can make a case for restoring the funds in the months ahead, at which time they might be released, councilors said.

Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s proposed budget had envisioned giving both residential and commercial ratepayers a 1 percent break in the fiscal year that begins on July 1. In the council’s version, which the mayor is already protesting, homeowners still get a break, but it’s only a reduction of .33 percent. For commercial property owners, the reduction in rates is closer to double what the mayor had proposed, or 1.95 percent.

Councilman James Cournoyer, the architect of the budget makeover, was generally applauded by peers for his two-pronged plan to make the city more tax-friendly to business and to set aside some funds for COVID-19’s potentially rainy day.

“We’re bringing commercial down, not as much as any of us would like to see but certainly to a level, if we continue on this road, incrementally, year after year, we can finally get ourselves into somewhat of a competitive position,” said Council Vice President Jon Brien.

Noting that commercial rates in some abutting com munities are about half what they are locally, Brien said, “We have got be sure as a leg islative body we are making it at least somewhat palatable to want to do business in the city of Woonsocket. $t this point, it’s cost prohibitive.”

The prevailing rates under the new budget would be 24 per thousand dollars for resi dential property and 35.24 per thousand dollars for com mercial. Cournoyer called the impact for homeowners “modest,” as it boils down to about 28 more per year com pared to the mayor’s proposal on a home worth 250,000.

In addition to tweaking the tax rates and setting aside more than 1 million for contingencies, the new budget also ratchets down the anticipated rate of tax collections to 97 percent, reflecting the likelihood that many prop erty owners may struggle to pay taxes amid the economic calamity the COVID19 pan demic. The mayor’s budget anticipated collecting 98 per cent of all taxes billed, but the council moved the figure to 97 percent, which is closer to the historical average. Ev ery point represents about a half million in revenue.

“If we end up, *od forbid, in a situation where we have a budget commission, I don’t want people wagging their fingers at the council saying they weren’t conservative enough or paying attention enough to the budget,” &our noyer said. “It’s just an effort to salt away some of our funds until we can get better clarity on the state’s budget as well as our collection rates.”

Cournoyer’s revisions affected several dozen line items across the departments of treasury, public works, finance and planning at &ity Hall, and not everyone on the council thought they were a good idea. Councilman Alexander Kithes, for one, felt there were simply too many of them to understand on short notice.

“This is a lot to digest,” said Kithes, who, along with Councilman David Soucy, were the only two members of the panel to vote against the spending plan.

Soucy asserted that some of the cuts went too far, es pecially those affecting the planning department. $bout

147,000 was transferred to contingency, including

78,000 which would have al lowed the city to fill a position for a planning analyst. That’s one of three vacant positions with salaries that are now, in effect, frozen. The others are purchasing agent in treasury, and construction supervisor, in public works.

Soucy said the planning department supports some of the bedrock economic de velopment chores in the city and it’s already operating on reduced manpower. He said he couldn’t support a budget that’s poised to further hobble its operations.

“To cut planning is not a wise thing,” Soucy said. “To get out of a hole you have to have the tools to get out of that hole.”

In addition to Brien and Cournoyer, Councilors John Gard, Denise Sierra and &ouncil President Dan *en dron threw their support be hind the budget. In a comment that summed up their take on it, Sierra said the budget doesn’t abolish funding for anything. It merely safeguards resources until officials can develop a clearer picture of whether everything the city wants is affordable.

“This money is not disap pearing,” she said. “It’s mere ly being put aside.”

Another critic of the ap proved amendments to the budget is the mayor, who indi cated that she’s strongly con sidering a veto of the spending plan during a brief interview on Tuesday. The mayor said she was particularly unhappy that homeowners came up short in the swap for added relief in the commercial sec tor. She also said that putting planning funds in storage undercuts the city’s economic development efforts and con flicts with the council’s own purported goals of making the city more pro business.

“Five councilors have proven that economic devel opment is not important to them,” the mayor said. “That is certainly contradictory to what they have been preach ing.”

Despite voting with the mi nority on the budget, Kithes, new newest member of the council, won support for a couple of amendments to beef up spending for cherished causes. Members of the coun cil got behind his proposal to shift funds from accounts for razing neglected property and building roads to increase the budget for book buying at Woonsocket Harris Public Library from 30,000 to

50,000. Also, Kithes ear marked another 5,500 to in crease aid for the temporarily homeless, lifting that account to 10,000.

But another one of Kithes’ proposals, to increase the roughly 16 million share of locally raised aid to schools by

100,000, did not pass. Councilors said that there’s still time to see whether the state will make good on its prom ise to increase aid to public schools by some 5 million, and the Woonsocket Educa tion Department may also end the year with a surplus.

The WED’s budget ac counts for some 88.3 million of the city’s total spending plan, representing an increase of about 4 percent over cur rent spending. 2n the munic ipal side, the budget is slightly less than this year’s.